I had done all the things I had planned at SNF by the end of the day on Thursday, and the weather looked good to fly home on Friday. Saturday and Sunday both looked questionable, so I decided that Friday was the day.

Friday morning I woke up early, so showed at 0600 then started packing and had breakfast. Several of the other campers helped me push the aircraft to a paved taxiway, so I wouldn’t sandblast anyone trying to taxi in the soft sandy ground. The departing traffic was starting to get a bit busy, but I only had a 10 minute taxi, and I was airborne at 0831. It is not easy to depart IFR from SNF, and the weather was great, so the first leg was VFR. I landed in Martinsville, VA after 3:15 flying time, with a nice 10 kt tailwind the whole way.

It was NASCAR race weekend in Martinsville, so the ramp had a bunch of business jets parked, and I had to push the RV-8 quite a ways to find a place to park it after it was fueled. The airport restaurant was packed. The two servers were working hard to keep up, but it took a long, long time to have lunch despite their best efforts. I was on the ground for two hours, which was about 45 minutes longer than I had expected.

The tailwind persisted on the second leg, but only about 5 kt, which was still a nice surprise as the forecast winds were for 5 kt of headwind. I landed in Smiths Falls 3:20 after leaving Martinsville. All the way from central Florida to home in 6:35 flying time. 1072 nm flight plan distance, with one fuel stop. 22.2 statute miles per US gallon, at an average speed from take off to touch down of 163 kt, or 187 mph, or 302 km/h (not including the time on the ground for the fuel stop). It sure is a great way to cross a lot of country pretty quickly.